Lassila and Wang on top in Minsk
Aug 31, 2018·Freestyle
Minsk, Belarus - Lydia Lassila (AUS) and Xindi Wang (CHN) have both claimed victories at the aerials World Cup event staged in Minsk.
Returning from a two-week break after the Olympic test event in Phoenix Park (KOR), aerialist were back at it again today just outside of Minsk, at located 20km northeast of the Belarusian capital Olympic Sport Complex Raubichi.
Serving as the penultimate stage of the seasons, and with quite unclear situation in the aerials World Cup standing, the competition in Belarus provided some solid portion of action and excitement as well as some interesting shuffle in the overall rankings.
In the ladies' competition Lydia Lassila grabbed a big win, as the Vancouver 2010 Olympic gold medalist and the Sochi 2014 Olympic bronze medalist proved to be back on top of her game this season. Lassila took her second victory in 2017, following her great comeback on the World Cup circuit three years after her last appearance in international competition at 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Another Australian athlete Danielle Scott finished the day on second, as she took back the yellow World Cup leader bib from Mengtao Xu of China, who rounded out today's podium.
With only one more competition left to wrap up the aerials World Cup season, Scott sits on top of the leaderboard with 402 points and only 2 points ahead of second Xu. We should expect nothing but a pretty tight battle between those two in Russia. The rules are simple as the one to score higher on the results list in Moscow will take the overall aerials World Cup title.
While Scott and Xu are clearly ahead of the pack and above the reach of any other athlete, the battle for third place is still wide open with today's winner Lydia Lassila moving up in the ranking just behind the leading duo with 254 total points.
In men's event Xindi Wang led the podium sweep for China, with Guangpu Qi and Hang Zhou finishing on second and third respectively. Wang also scored his career's first World Cup win.
Finishing second on the day Guangpu Qi also had a perfect reason to celebrate his good performance in Minsk, as with another 80 points in the ranking and his closer rival Anton Kushnir (BLR) out of competition in Belarus, Qi secured the aerials World Cup title as he will be now looking to receive his crystal globe at season's grand finale in Moscow.
With three World Cup wins so far this season, Kushnir still sits second in the ranking with 308, while Mac Bohonnon from USA occupies third spot with 288 points following his fourth place on the day.
The aerials World Cup season concludes next weekend with a final competition in Moscow, Russia on March 4.
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